[MUSIC PLAYING] This episode is brought to you by Experian. Are you paying for subscriptions you don't use, but can't find the time or energy to cancel them? Experian could cancel unwanted subscriptions for you, saving you an average of $270 per year, and plenty of time. Download the Experian app. Results will vary. Not all subscriptions are eligible. Savings are not guaranteed. Paid membership with connected payment account required. Make this new school year an opportunity for your kids to learn important life skills with Greenlight. Greenlight is a debit card and money app for families, where kids learn how to save, invest, and spend wisely. While parents keep an eye on kids' money habits, Greenlight also helps families get into their fall routine, with a chores feature that lets parents assign chores and pay kids allowance when they check them off. Get your first month free at greenlight.com/spotify. Greenlight.com/spotify. My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big row as man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friend's still laughing at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B. But with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to linkedin.com/results to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com/results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. (upbeat music) - Flashes, huh? What's your favorite scary movie? - Um, not that one. (laughs) (upbeat music) - And welcome back to Horror Queers. We're talking lion-headed flues. We're talking, what does he think this is? A game? And we're talking House on Haunted Hill, 1999. And I'm Joe. - And I'm Trace. And we're talking, where are you? I'll let you out. I'll get you out. I will. - Oh, Jesus Christ. - Oh. - Poor Lily Taylor in this room. - We're talking about, it's about family. (laughs) - We're talking about, I haven't introduced you yet. (laughs) - Oh, well, that's how mad I am. (laughs) - Fair, fair points. - No, you know what, let's run with this. - Do it. - I'm just gonna introduce our guests who are not waiting in the wings. (laughs) They are the host of Kill by Kill, a podcast in which they unpack all the gory details of Horror Cinema's least-discussed topic. The characters, you may also remember them from our episodes on the Quiet Witchboard, Batman and Robin, and Murder by Numbers. Please welcome back Patrick Hamilton and Gina Radcliffe. - Five-timer club, baby! - Oh, my God. - I think you've only been matched by my husband. I think that's the only groups that I've had every year. - As far as our verve for life or appearances on the show. - Yeah. - Both. - Both. (laughs) - But, in case our listeners did not get what we were discovering, everyone, we are not covering House of Haunted Hill 'cause we've already done that. We are covering 1999's Yandabons, The Haunting. - Mm-hmm. - And you should take full ownership of this. It should be Yandabons, like John Carpenter's, above the title, because. - Oh. Well, I ain't own it. - It would have been Yandabons, Steven Spielberg's The Haunting. - Right. (laughs) - As we discussed last week. - And let's table that discussion, but I want everyone to think, is there a way where this movie turns out better with Steven Spielberg actually directing it? (sighs) You do not have to answer now. We will come back to it once you lay the table. - I have my answer already. - Yeah, we'll go ahead, Gina. No, what is the answer now? - I mean, it was a completely different script that actually reflected the book. Yeah, it could have been great. - Yeah. Well, and that's the interesting thing too, right? Because they were so adamant about how, oh, this is a re-adaptation of the novel because they can't remake the original film. - Right, they don't have the rights. - Yeah, exactly. So, oh boy. Actually, out of curiosity, has anyone here read the novel The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson? - It's one of my favorite books. - Oh, okay, good. So y'all have way more insight on this than I do at least 'cause I have not read this book. - Yeah, it's nothing like the movie. (laughs) It turns out. (laughs) - And of course, folks, we should note that we also have an episode on the 1963 film, and in that episode, our guest, Robin Adams, is also a fan of the book. So thank God we're matched by people who know what the fuck they're talking about. - Absolutely. Well, okay, so I guess easy softball question right off the bat, everyone. Did everyone see this in theaters in 1999? - Sure did. - Yeah, I did. - I did in the nation of Japan. - What? (laughs) - Because Patrick lived there for a while. - I did. I lived there for over two years on and off in between L.A. and Orlando, helping open universal studios, Japan and Osaka. And so there's a few movies that I happen to catch there in a few movies that I happen to catch here, whereas my disappointing fan of Menace watch was in universal studios here in America. But this and a Tale of Two Sisters and Charlie's Angels, by far, this was the worst movie I saw when in Japan. I mean, when you're competing with Charlie's Angels, that's like five-star American cinema classic. - I can't tell you the amount of joy, the opening 15 minutes of that movie gave me. I look upon that as a revelation. It came out when I needed it too. I needed that most of joy at that specific moment. And I needed the dread that Tale of Two Sisters brought when I saw that no one needs 1999's The Haunting. - Oh, man. So this is one of those movies that, 'cause I was, I'm gonna bring it on my age, I was 10 when this came out. And I remember seeing the standees and the posters for this, but I was hoping praying this would be PG-13, so I could see it. So I saw this motherfucker twice in theaters. And I think I saw it a second time too, because the trailer for Sleepy Hollow was attached to it, and I really wanted to see that again, 'cause I couldn't see that movie, 'cause it was rated R. - Right. - But no, it's like my dad and I, my dad took me to go see it, 'cause I was father some bonding time, and then we made my mom and sister come see it with us the second time. - Ooh, because you hate them? - Okay, so again, 10 year old Trace did like this movie. Like, admittedly, I have not seen this since, yeah. Probably at least high school. I find things to like about it, but oh yeah. Honestly, this movie's biggest crime is that it's just boring as fuck. - Well, it's also, it's also a fact that they could have basically made it its own movie with just a couple of tweaks. That's all they had to do. They could have removed it entirely from any connection to the haunting of Hill House. - Right. - And they didn't, and it suffers greatly for it. - But part of its value, what got Spielberg to make Da Bont trade him for minority report, which is what happens, is that he wants minority report because Tom Cruise has an empty slot and a schedule. And Da Bont's like, why would I do that? And he's like, 'cause I'm going to give you the rights to the remake of The Haunting of Hill House with this cast. Like, this is all set up for you. You know, I started working on this with, you know, Stephen King. Like, there's a lot going on here for you and I'm gonna finance it. We're gonna build giant fucking sets. And Da Bont at this point is so beaten about the head from speed two that he's like, okay. - Well, so I guess that my, here's another question then. Do you think Jan Da Bont is the criminal in this movie? Or is he doing the best he can with the material he's working with? - I really think for me, it comes down to the script. The script is atrocious. - Yeah. - And it asks a lot, like, let's take Poltergeist, for example, one of those times where you're shown a lot of the haunting of that particular home, but it's always isolated to a closet, a bedroom, a clown, some chairs, the pool. It is very specific when it goes gonzo and it's contained. - Yeah. - Here, every light fixture is a pair of eyes. Every wall can turn into-- - Anything. - Brighteners, but lesser than. How many curtains turn into ghost children in this fucking movie? Or the course of an hour and 51 minutes? - That ghost curtain was very much Steven Spielberg's idea because he thought it was really cool. Yeah, it definitely is the point where I was watching this and I was like, why don't they just leave at a certain point? Because as soon as that door literally turns into a fist and punches Lily Taylor away, also then I'm kind of like, okay, I get that these are kind of-- Actually, you're not even related to these children. Why do you care about these ghost children? - No, she is, she is, that's a big, no, she is. There's a big reveal at the end where she finds out from a ghostly encounter that she is related to the family so-- - No, no, no, no, no, I know, okay, no, because she is like the great-great-granddaughter of Hugh Crane's second wife, but okay. - But the kids are all just child laborers. - That's what I thought is, the kids aren't his kids. He pulls them in from his textile factory and then tortures them and kills them. - But as we all know, you have to be related via DNA in order to release ghost children from a house. That's just science. - Yeah, this movie's real interested in science. - The thing that I cannot emphasize enough is that none of that happens in the book. - Yeah, no. - None of that, a ghost doesn't call her to come to the house for this experiment. She just finds the ad and the paper. - Okay, wait, wait, wait, I'm sorry. So I remember even as a kid, like that was one thing. I was like, that's really stupid that the house called her, but I love it. So House of Haunted Hill comes out like three months after this movie in October of '99. - Right, but they would have been shooting probably around the same time. - Yes, but I love it in this movie. We have a house making phone calls and in the House of Haunted Hill, we have a house hacking a computer system to change a guest list. (laughing) - Honestly, there's so many similarities. - It's not as good as the lamp in Amityville 4 making phone calls and driving a car, but. - But at least that's plugged in. It's talking to the other electronics. Gina, it's plugged into the wall. - Well, but that's also a movie that I haven't seen that one, but I'm assuming it's maybe embracing the camp factor of it all. - I would argue yes. - Yeah, I would say so. - Whereas this is not, this movie is taking itself so seriously serious. - Very, very serious. - So deadly serious. - And I almost think it would be better if it was trying to be campy because nothing about this movie is scary. And it's interesting though, because I tweeted a photo of like the fucking cherubs when they're screaming, when the house has eyes or whatever. And I didn't think they were that scary, but I had so many replies from people that were like, oh my God, no, like six year old me saw this and like these things scared the fuck out of me. So for children, this did work for a lot of people. - Well, that's the thing is, I think we're all a big old no on this movie, but if you think of it as a bit of gateway gothic horror, you know, for preteens, I think this could be scary and or at least, ooh, okay, I wanna check out something else, you know, where does this journey take me? - True. I mean, there's an economy of scale problem here though. And it really comes down to the concept that Spielberg is sold on a little bit. When someone refers to the project as the Jurassic Park of haunted house movies, he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can do that. You can make this such a spectacular adventure in such an awe-inspiring setting and have these big encounters with ghosts. Wouldn't that make it scarier? And the answer is no, when someone gets punched with a giant fist made out of a door, I agree, a six-year-old could find that scary, but no one else in the audience will. - I will say that some of the, I was expecting all the CGI to look really bad in this movie and some of it does. - Some of it looks real bad, some of it's fine. - I think some of it's fine. Yeah, I mean, I think the aforementioned like eyes in the wall, I think that actually looks quite good. If a little goofy, but I think it looks fine. - Whatever it takes, ghost forms, it's a problem. - I think it's meant to be, for me at least, a little bit of a call back to Amityville. - Yeah, how the windows in the house look kind of like eyes, the third floor windows. The problem for me is that, and you guys know this because you did the original haunting, it's so stripped down, where everything is suggested. The only thing that the audience gets is occasionally some thumping sounds. - Yeah. - That's it, everything weighs on how the actors are reacting to things they think they are seeing and hearing. And the book is the same way. And I don't understand why in adapting the haunting of Hill House for an updated version, the idea is, let's make it real big. Let's make it an amusement park. Let's put a literal fucking carousel inside this house. - Oh, I love this set though. - And this weird hallway that's filled with water. - Oh yeah, that's for no reason. - Things that look cool. - And are like, are the dudleys maintaining that? - 'Cause that's stagnant water, that's gonna fester, you're gonna get bugs. - You sure are? - What is the maintenance of this place? How do they possibly pay the dudleys enough to do this? - Especially since they don't stay there at night, so they have like a presumably-- - They gotta do it all on the day. - They have an eight hour work day to get all this time. - Oh my God, no wonder they're so comudgy. They're overworked and underpaid. But the sets are fucking gorgeous. Like every new set you come into, it is three stories tall, it is ginormous. They filmed it in these empty airplane hangars in here in my hometown, now of Long Beach, California. And they are ginormous and gorgeous. And they're so big that the economy of scale of when a ghost happens is that it has to be a story and a half, and you're like, that doesn't make it scarier. It just presents a bigger problem for you to get past, especially when they leave all of these characters high and dry in terms of character. - Ooh, wait. - Yeah, they don't, and can I jump to what makes me the maddest about this? It has to do with the ending. - Okay. - Where in the end, I guess you call it, she sacrifices her life. - Yep. - So she can guide these ghost children to heaven, I guess. And you're supposed to get the impression that that's kind of a good thing. - It's great. She smiles on the way out. - She was so miserable in life and lonely and you had nowhere to go because her asshole, sister and brother-in-law, we're gonna force her to sell the apartment. - Cartoon villains, very much. The book and the original movie ends like, it's a tragedy. Like she does die, but it's left ambiguous as to whether she commits suicide or the house forces her to drive her car into a tree at the end. - Yeah. - It's like the house giving her one final fuck you because she tries to leave. - Well, it's also kind of, it's doing this stupid trope that I hate specifically with female characters where it's like, oh, you're miserable. Why don't we give you a bunch of kids? You can become a mother figure and it makes you so happy, right? You, your life is fulfilled. (laughing) - It just guts the whole point of the story. - But you have a map quest, so she knows the way. Those kids don't know how to do map quest. - Yeah, okay, okay, okay. We're getting ahead of ourselves, Trace. You need to tell us how this came out. - Yeah, so to figure out what happened here, (laughing) we actually have to discuss Stephen King's 2002 mini-series Rose Red. So I'm pulling stuff from a couple of different sources, but mainly Bad House, The Making of Stephen King's Rose Red, which is a featurette on that film's DVD. The Haunting Director Jan DeBont on swapping projects with Stephen Spielberg and The State of Action for Collider from 2020. And Speed Director Jan DeBont on reinventing the Haunting and trying to reinvent Godzilla for Polygon. And, okay, I don't know what Jan DeBont was doing in 2020, but in November of 2020, he had a lot of interviews being done with him, so. - He's doing all the press. - He was picking up Skype calls by the sound of it. - Oh, yes. - Oh, that makes sense. - 'Cause we were all in pandemic. - We were all in pandemic, yeah. - Anyway, okay, so you see, Stephen King had always wanted to write a script about a haunted house, and he originally pitched the idea for what would become Rose Red to Stephen Spielberg as a feature film in 1996. And everyone, some of this is going to be carryover from last week since we covered Twister last week. Didn't plan it, but it's happening. - It's our Jan DeBont double, boo. - Yes. - Jan DeBokay. (laughing) His idea was to do a part-loosery make of the haunting and part something else. So it was going to be like this hybrid thing. And the project went into turnaround, or the use of outside assistance to resolve problems, to prevent a film project from completing its development phase, basically to stop it from going into development hell. (laughing) We had to bring in people to like, media between Stephen King and Stephen Spielberg. - Ooh. - But a complete script was written, but Spielberg demanded more thrills and action sequences while King wanted more horror. So. - To out of that, make it scary. - Yeah, exactly. So King and Spielberg mutually agreed to shelve the project after several years of work, and King eventually bought back the rights of the script and returned into it in, well, the year this came out, honestly, to make Rose Red. Though that was delayed when he got hit by a car. So that came out in 2002 on ABC. I also remember liking Rose Red as a kid, but I have no idea how it holds up. - I feel like Patrick and Gina, you two have seen it, right? - Yeah, I don't remember very much of it. - I mean, I think that the characters are interesting, but there's always that ceiling when it comes to his ABC mini series, and it just cannot rise above. And sometimes that lends itself to interesting filmmaking as it did in the stand. - Right. - Many can argue with it. And then, you know, the ambition rises when it comes to the shining and Rose Red, but the budget really doesn't end. - Yeah, it can't hurt it, yeah. - There's some interesting stuff and some, you know, fun characters, but it's probably one of those things that's just, it's really Stephen King Tropy when it comes to that it's a hodgepodge. - It's also four and a half hours long. - Yeah. - Well, yeah, the typical mini series. - But, okay, so after all that, Stephen Spielberg looked into actually remaking the haunting and doing a more faithful adaptation, or in this case, re-adapting Shirley Jackson's 1959 novel because they didn't have the rights to Robert Weiss's 1963 film, meaning they couldn't take a single sentence of dialogue from that movie or replicate any of its scenes. Although, I guess I'm assuming unless they're in the book too. - Right. - So back to Spielberg, okay. So he was a Shirley Jackson fan and began working on his own remake of the haunting, finally in the summer of '98, along with producer Susan Arnold and Donna Arcoff Roth, with it being distributed by Spielberg's company, DreamWorks Pictures, which was founded in '94, but their first film didn't come out until '97. So it's still a relatively new company at this point. But Spielberg was also going to direct the haunting. So, again, we kind of talked about this again, last week in Patrick Cloutis Inn, but at the same time, Jan de Bont had been in pre-production on Minority Report and had been for a while, by the way, like years working on this movie. He'd been developing the script with Michael Tolkien and first-time screenwriter David Self, the latter of whom Spielberg would make right the haunting. Make right the haunting. Like, he's like, make it right, do it. Do it for me. Well, what happened here was that, yes, Tom Cruise suddenly became available for a particularly period to do Minority Report, but in de Bont's words, there was no way he was going to be ready to direct it since he was in the post-production process of Twister. So then Spielberg said, yeah, hey, like, you know, give me Minority Report, I'll give you the haunting. I'll flip you for it and I'll come out the winner. I'll also give you David Self, that writer you're working with, this is your comfortable with him and he can write the screenplay. Okay, so the thing I find really funny about this, though, and again, Joe, this will tie back to our Eyes Wide Shut episode, Minority Report would get delayed for several years and wouldn't get released until 2002. (laughs) And the original plan, though, was that they were gonna film Minority Report after Mission Impossible II, but as we all know, Mission Impossible II kept getting pushed back because Eyes Wide Shut kept going over schedule. And Mission Impossible II gets pushed back so much that the villain doesn't end up playing Wolverine. It just has a domino effect over and over and over again that just reshuffles the fabric of pop culture for weirdly enough, like a good decade. - Well, and so then Minority Report was delayed again so Spielberg could finish AI because that was something Stanley Kubrick was supposed to direct, but then he died. So, like, again, we did Twister last week and Eyes Wide Shut two weeks ago and we didn't plan this narrative in our programming. - And motherfucker Todd Field is in this movie too. So it's week three of Todd Field. - Yep. (both laugh) Still though, Spielberg did visit the set of The Haunting often and even directed a small scene in the film during its reshoot period when Debont was unavailable. But again, this doesn't seem to be a Spielberg Hooper Poltergeist situation. We can talk about Spielberg's, I'm gonna say, disowning of this movie. I have seen things that said that Steven Spielberg was so disgusted with this movie that he removed his name from it. And I watched all fucking six minutes of these credits and his name is not anywhere in there. But these are all rumors. I couldn't find a legit source of anything that confirmed these thoughts. I'm sure Spielberg probably wiped them out if it was true, but nevertheless. - Somebody takes TV out, get 'em drunk, get the truth. (both laugh) Now, for the cast, the studio initially wanted a star in the lead role of Eleanor, but Debont, he doesn't like working with stars. He says, "When you have a star, you're always looking at the star and not the character." So he wanted someone more unknown. And at this time, Lily Taylor was primarily known for indie fare, so that was a good gift for him. But even at the time, though, the rest of the cast wasn't like, they're not who they are now. - Well, Liam Mason was the biggest name. So like, Katherine Zeta-Jones was really only known for "The Mask of Zorro," although entrapment came out three months before this movie. - And was huge. - And was huge. Well, huge-ish. Owen Wilson's biggest role was probably Anaconda, but you know, he had done Wes Anderson's bottle rocket and had a small role in Armageddon. - He was bubbling. 'Cause I feel like Shanghai Noon is maybe when he really, like, rose to prominence. - Yeah. Yeah. - It's a confluence with it. Like, he's showing up and showing up and showing up. But I don't know that any of those other roles are as Owen Wilson as this is, to the point where, wow, shows up more often than any other word of dialogue. - Yeah. Although I will say, I like him in this movie because he's at least giving me something to laugh at. - I mean, he's the comic relief in a movie that maybe shouldn't have comic relief or needs more comic relief. - But I have to say that as much as I enjoy Lily Taylor, she's awful in this. - Okay. - She is completely lost at sea. - I wrote, like, my letterbox review, I was like, good Lord, though, like, I'll help Lily Taylor because she is stuck just running around screaming, saying, like, what's the most asinine dialogue for, like, most of this movie. - This poor woman, I shudder to think that there's a bunch of people who have only ever seen her in this and think that she's probably one of the worst actresses they've ever seen. - Like, she's given, like, no direction on how to play this character. Like, the character is, she's unwell. - Yeah. - In the book, and I think Julie something played her in the original movie. She's, you know, a little emotionally fragile. She's been in a toxic relationship with her taking care of her sick mother. You know, they do kind of establish that a little bit. But see, this is all the things that they lose because they can't adapt the movie. - Yeah. - You know, the conversation she has with a little girl about, you know, don't let them take your cup of stars. You know, even the, like, Flanagan version, which does, again, divert heavily from the source material. - But it's still a good miniseries, though. - And it captures the spirit of it, I think. - Yeah. - But, like, they don't know what they're doing with this character, if she's supposed to be kind of nuts. If she's, you know, they barely hint initially that she's imagining all this. But, like, she's just given no direction on how she should act, and she's not selling any of this dialogue. - No. - And the cane stuff with the mother, we use it once and never go back into it. And I was like, wow, that's a real missed opportunity to not, like, you know, try to drive this character even more insane, but whatever. Like, that feels more like a studio thing, right? Where it's like, oh no, we have to have the audience relate to her, we want them to like her. If she's Kuku bananas, that's not good. - That's a direct Spielberg note. When he was developing this with King, King said, you have to complicate these people so that the house can exploit their complications. And Spielberg was like, no, not necessarily because really in Jurassic Park, I have a bunch of characters who, when they're called upon, they become heroes. And I think you can do that in a haunted house world. - Why do they need a hero in this? - I don't know. - There aren't any heroes in the story. They're just regular people. - And fucked up people at that. - Yeah. Like, you know, the original story and the original, they're kind of gaslighting each other a little bit, but like here, it's just like, you know, these are all the good guys and the house is the bad guy. - But it's not even the house. It's fucking Kuke Crane, this made up bullshit character. - Wait, wait, wait, wait. One last question before I continue. If we have the movie as it is, but it's not based on the haunting, but it's not called the haunting. It's not related to the original story at all. It's just its own quote-unquote original thing. Does this work better for you? - I mean, it still wouldn't be a good movie, but it would make me less mad than it exists. - Right. I think it's fundamentally flawed, honestly. - Yeah. - From concept forward, there is a fundamental flaw in terms of what it wants to accomplish. And we'll get into the details of it, but Gina's absolutely right as you almost always is. Then, you know, in the book, the fundamental idea is I'm going to prove whether or not the paranormal exists by having these people who have individual paranormal skills come into this house and see if they can unravel, you know, if this is real or not. And in here, no, these people just have like sleeping disorders and, you know, random personality defects. But other than that, they're more than willing to burst through doors and jump up stairwells to help one another. - And save ghosts, children. - Dude, like those, okay, all right, all right, all right. So, okay, this film has a budget of 80 million dollars, which is, mind you, 10 million less than Twister. - Right. - Eight to 10 million of that went to The Sets, designed by Eugenio Zanetti, who had just won an art direction Oscar for the 1995 film Restoration. When building The Sets, Zanetti looked at Turkish, Gothic, and Victorian architecture. But, okay, this is where I just find this fascinating. The most ambitious work orders went to the Visual Effects Supervisor, who is none other than Phil Tippett. - Oh. - The listeners, if you don't know who that is, he's kind of the be-all-end-all when it comes to creature design, stop motion animation, specifically stop motion animation, and computerized character animations in films like Star Wars, Robocop, and Jurassic Park. So, like, that was clearly the Spielberg get. But, he had to map out the movie's gradual escalation of supernatural manifestations from, you know, buckling breathing doors, to sheet slithering ghosts, kids, to the effects heavy finale. And so, you know, he, I think is his quote, where he's like, you know, everyone's mind, a dinosaur's the same, a twister is the same, like a dinosaur's a dinosaur, twister's a twister. But, ghostly events and creepiness are different. One person's idea is different than another's. So, he kind of went carte blanche with what he could do here. Although, I would argue maybe not enough. Yeah. But, you mentioned the wall's breathing, and doors, you know, which is kind of a thing that it's borrowing from the 63 original. But, you can play that maybe once or twice. But, the house breathing happens over. And over four times. And over. You wear out whatever creep factor you had when it escalates to the point where entire ceilings, multiple times are going to-- (gasping) It's really a thing for me, though, or whenever Eleanor and Lily Taylor is like running away from the ghost of Ukraine at the end. And it's like, isn't he just the house in general? So, can't he just like drop a brick on her head? Sure. Well, he does try, we do try that, you know, the bed posts are like, kind of turning into like tentacles and pinning her to the bed. And this scene, and her screaming, I can picture Yonda Bont just standing by. Keep screaming, keep screaming, keep going, keep going. But do it for 10 more minutes. It is dragging out this poor-- (screaming) (laughing) Needless to say, Lily Taylor's better horror role is in The Conjuring, obviously. Yes. She's done so, she, almost everything else I've seen her in, even before this movie. She's absolutely nailed it. And here's, it's like her first day. She's up, she's picked without a paddle. Yeah. Which tells me that it's not her. That is the direction that she was provided. So, yeah. Well, speaking of, Dibont also loved playing with the, at the time, very new Dolby Digital Surround EX, which was introduced earlier that summer with Star Wars Episode 1. So, Liam Nason was also on a stride here because he had Star Wars out at the same time as this. So, I'm sure he probably was a big draw, maybe, for people, I don't know. Right, yeah. But Dibont sent sound designer Gary Ridestrom, who, biggest credit for him at the time was saving Private Ryan, to old wineries, condemned buildings, the echoey underground parking garage of Skywalker Ranch, as well as a co-worker's home, because apparently that co-worker had the worst plumbing in the world to it, the point where it did sound like ghost moaning. OK. Filming took place from November 30th of '98 and ended on April 9th of '99. Y'all, that is three months before the movie is supposed to hit theaters. She's a, they, they, they, like, not sick for six weeks straight to edit it. So, that's, yes. So, while it wasn't as troubled a production as that of Twister, it was troubled nonetheless, because, like Twister, we had a cinematographer that left one week into filming. [LAUGHS] So, cinematographer Caleb Deschanel left over creative differences after a week. And, yeah, if that name sounds familiar, that is Zoe's father. That makes sense. But then they also, OK, so they finished filming in April of '99, reshoots took place in June of 1999, a month before the movie came out. This is where the, the Ghost Baby thing enters the picture. The Ghost Baby thing wasn't a part of this until the reshoots. No. They think that they needed this to improve the movie. Yeah, to make it scarier. So, one of the reshoots, I don't have an exact list, it was hard to figure out exactly what it was, but I know for a fact, the studio demanded a new ending B shot. And I don't know what the original ending was or what they changed, 'cause, like, if you're doing a reshoot a month before the movie comes out, it can't be that extensive. But maybe I'm wrong. But Lily Taylor said she shuffled from New York to LA four times when filming 'The Haunting', each time thinking she had put the character to rest, but didn't. (laughing) Oh, God. She hated it as much as we do. Yeah, I think, you know, this is one of her first big, like, major studio pictures. And I wonder if that kind of scared her away from it for a bit. I can't imagine it didn't. Yeah. They did struggle a little bit with the MPAA, with Debont saying that they flirted with an R rating. I'm pretty sure the idea here is Luke's decapitation. Oh, yeah. Like, they had to turn that down a little bit and, like, whatever. But the MPAA, it's interesting. Same with the Conjuring. They said it was too tense. Like, it's too scary for a PG-13 rating. So they had to trim a couple of things. And noting the on Debont blamed the post-Columbine cultural climate at the time, making them more strict on what they couldn't do. But then he also goes on to say, like, oh, well, this is a movie that kids can go see. Like, we wanted kids to be able to see this movie. And I was like, okay, well, kids and teens are very different, right? - But you're aiming for a thrill ride the whole family can enjoy. Which is something that Jurassic Park does in spades. It is legitimately scary. Like, I had to take my kid out of a Alamo draft house screening of Jurassic Park, even though he'd seen it before, but he had not seen it on the big screen. And that Velociraptor attack in the kitchen absolutely terrified him because it's fucking scary. It has tension and release. And it has this very artful use of special effects that makes it feel like those creatures are going to eat some kids. - Well, that's why I think, though, and maybe Spielberg being a director here like wouldn't have made the movie better, but I do think he would have been better at crafting scares. Or at least tension and suspense, 'cause this movie has none of that. - Yeah, no, that I agree with. - Yeah, totally. - Can I say I don't? (laughing) I mean, listen, there's absolutely thrilling and terrifying moments in Spielberg movies. That is without a doubt. But when we go back to Poltergeist, what elevates Poltergeist is not the Spielberg shots. It is not people staring up at a glowing orb out behind the camera. That is what solidifies us in identifying with the characters. What terrifies us are ultimately the sequences that you can only get with the true director of Poltergeist. - Of what he raises. - It's the only person on the planet who can film someone's sanity snap and what happens when they're just a bundle of nerves afterwards. That is what lingers with Poltergeist. When characters are so frightened by what they've been through and just experience or are going through that they leave sanity behind and they're all just like, "Well, part of my brain's operating "and I'm just gonna scream and try to get out of this." That is not a Spielberg specialty, my friends. - So what you're saying is Toby Hooper should have directed this to me. - Yes. Well, let's just make that crystal clear 'cause we don't want any angry idiots being like, "I misheard this." - No, no. I will say for the record, we have a T-shirt and our T-shirt shop. Poltergeist is directed by Toby Hooper with second AD work and special effect shots, namely, "I'm gonna pull my face apart in a mirror." You can tell, that's directed by Steven Spielberg, but he can't say so because of DGA rules. He can't direct two movies in one year and so therefore it all gets jumbled in the press and then the LA Times fucks it up and then Spielberg has to put a thing in the newspaper saying, "I didn't direct this movie." Toby Hooper did. - Well, nevertheless, I think that's why, though, people were wondering if Spielberg had a heavier hand in directing this film, but he did not again. He only directed one of these reshoot scenes that was taking place in the three months leading up to the release date. But this film comes out July 23rd, 1999, the week after Eyes Wide Shut and grossed 33.4 million during its opening weekend, ranking in first place ahead of newcomers Inspector Gadget, which placed second and drop dead gorgeous, which placed eighth. - Travesty. - Yeah, dropped dead gorgeous should have been number one. What has a larger cultural tale? This or dropped dead gorgeous? - Well, for sure. I mean, folks, we are talking about this for its 25th anniversary, but like, is anyone celebrating this movie? - Well, some people might be, but drop dead gorgeous, I should also plan, it wasn't half the number of screens as this movie was. Like, it was not a major studio film. But word of mouth clearly got around because the haunting fell to fourth place in its second weekend, being beaten by newcomers Runaway Bride and Deep Blue Sea, as well as the Blair Witch Project, which finally expanded to a wide release after spending two weeks in 30 theaters nationwide. The haunting would go on to gross total, 91.4 million domestically against that $80 million budget and 85.9 million internationally for a worldwide gross of 177.3 million. So it did a little bit more than double its budget, but I still think this is probably viewed as a disappointment. - It absolutely should be. - Now, let's stop for a moment and you just mentioned the Blair Witch Project. - Mm-hmm, right. - So think of how effective that movie is and how genuinely scary that movie is. And you don't see jack shit as far as what is terrifying them. You know, what is driving them insane, what is getting that Hooper effect that Patrick was just talking about, where these people are losing their minds and you don't see anything. You know what you get? You get the a production assistant banging around the tent. You know, you get like someone stepping on a twig. That's what you get. And then you compare to the haunting, which it's like a carnival show. - Yeah. - You know, stuff is constantly happening and yet one movie is genuinely terrifying and the other one is just, well, I have a headache now. - Well, this movie is for the people that walked out of the Blair Witch Project going, that was really boring. Nothing happened. - Yeah. This is meant for large mainstream audiences. - And kids. - And kids, yeah. - Which again, I mean, look, I was telling when I saw this, I didn't think it was boring, but I can't imagine like a six-year-old being entertained by this movie, but maybe I'm wrong, I clearly am wrong, I guess. But nevertheless, critical reception was negative. - We're looking at a 17% on Rotten Tomatoes with an average score of 3.7 out of 10, whereas Letterbox users have awarded it, quote unquote, a 4.6 out of 10. And we got five razzie nominations for this movie, for "Worse Picture," "Worse Director" for Yanda Bond, "Worse Actress" for Catherine Zeta-Jones, so which I call bullshit. - No, no, no, no, no. - Yeah, she's not great, but-- - She's trying. - She's also given like a nothing, her-- - Yes, yeah. - The entire extent of her character, whoops, she's bisexual! - Oh, just wait, oh, well, just wait. We're also nominated for "Worse Screenplay" and "Worse Screen Couple" for Lily Taylor and Catherine Zeta-Jones, which, bah. To that I say, there is no lesbianism in this movie between, I mean, like, there's a couple kisses, but it never reads as sexual or sensual or anything. - And again, I'm gonna be a broken record, but there's a lot more tension between these characters and then the original movie and definitely in the book. - Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. - So this movie did lose all of those razzie awards to "Wild Wild West," except, except for "Worse Actress." Guess who won "Worse Actress" this year? - Oh, was that a bin? I feel like that was a demi, that was a demi more year. - No, I'll give you a clue. It's a movie we've already mentioned. - Oh, it was all "What's Your Face?" "When Blair Witch," either Donnie-- - Yeah, Adri-Donnie, "When Blair Witch"-- - Are you kidding me? Unbelievably. - Unbelievably. - Oh my God, burn that institution to the ground. - But here's the thing, once again, I'm just gonna say it. I said this last week when we were talking about the razzies, I'm just gonna say it again, we fucking hate women. - Okay, yeah. - Yeah. - That's all they got. - Because we learned that Jamie Gertz was nominated for "Worse Supporting Actress" for "Twister," and she's arguably one of the better parts of that movie. - Yes. - She's like the voice of sanity in that movie. - Yeah. - The people fucking hate her. - So, this is the end of my spiel, but I will say, there was a 2020 interview with Polygon with Devont, and he had this to say about the reception, because Polygon was saying, "Oh, like, you know, more people really like this movie now," and, okay, mmm. - Sight your source, Polygon. - Devont responds to this, and I quote, "People were thinking I was going to do a remake of the old one, "which was a really good movie, but that was never the plan. "So, the expectations were much more directed "toward the older version and not toward "a different interpretation of Jackson's story. "So, that was the really difficult thing to deal with. "I was so surprised by it, that they took it so literally. "If you see this as a remake, you have to tell the same story, "and obviously that wasn't the case. "That wasn't very well presented in publicity. "But now, in several countries where I've talked about movies "and with film students who didn't have the knowledge "that it had to be the same as the old one, "they saw it as a different movie, "so they didn't have that comparison level. "And if you read general reactions now, "they're much higher than when the movie came out, "which is kind of nice to see. "Mm, my thing with this is he's only blaming "the negative reception on the fact that people were "comparing it to the original film." - Which is no. - That's why I ask that questioner. Like, does this work if you don't compare it to the film? Does it work as a standalone film? And I think the general consensus between all of us is, no, it doesn't. - No, no, no. - Well, also, he's on the record of saying, "Okay, if you're comparing it to the '63 Robert Weiss film, "it doesn't look good." And we're all in agreement about that. Yes, he's actually drew there. But he's also suggesting that this is an okay adaptation of the book, and that is just blatantly false. - No, that's, yeah, no, no. - It takes no advantage of the advance of time in terms of the character of Theo. She's not returned to her status that she's in on the book. And while the book is very subtle in terms of her being bisexual and definitely connecting with the Eleanor character, this movie takes no advantage of it whatsoever. It just, it's uncommented on beyond her, maybe pro-- We don't even know if she's prodding Eleanor when she says, "Boyfriend, girlfriend." That's it, it's meant to shock the straights. - But I also think that, I mean, in low, I like quite a few of Yandabong's films, but subtlety is not what he does. - I've done too. (both laughing) - No, to briefly get back to Twister, although you covered it last week, I must mention this because I've said this in the past and maybe your audience has never heard this particular story, so I'll tell it fast. In 1996, I saw the studio preview for Twister. I was seated behind somebody that I could not see around. That is because Michael Crichton was six foot 15. - Yeah. - And so I had to peer around his wife, who I recognized from the boogans. I had never seen Michael Crichton in real life, no matter how big a looker fan I was. And just for the audience at home, when Jamie Gert says, "We have cows, there's more cows." I'm like the rest of the audience around us, laughing in joy. We're having a grand old time, and Michael Crichton gets slowly furious with me in particular for enjoying the movie he wrote and produced. So if you've never had Michael Crichton pissed off at you, that is a fucking reality. And I felt like, I was barely six foot at the time. I would have had to climb a ladder to touch his nose. - Well, I think part of the reason he got so angry at that is that was likely a Joss Whedon rewrite of his script. - 'Cause Joss Whedon was brought in to tinker with that script for most of its production process. - He was delighted. - I'm sure he enjoyed the fucking check he got though. - Yeah. - Oh sure. But okay, Joe, let's talk about what happens in this movie. - All right, so we open with a bunch of aerial shots of Hill House. This is actually a house over in England. This is not part of the studio sets. - I will say, I don't think the shot is entirely necessary. I know it's like to introduce the house like super early, but like the way we transition from this and we get the title card and then boom, nail fighting with the sister, I was like, ugh, like, okay, fine. - Like don't you wanna save the opening when Nell drives up? So we get to see it as she experiences it. - That might be a good idea. And I actually do like the way that shot too, when she's looking at it through the gate, but whatever. - Yeah, so yes, we then transition over to an apartment complex in a city and we learn that following her mother's death, Eleanor, aka Nell, is being evicted from the space by her sister, Jane, who, Virginia Madsen? - Yeah, what is she even doing on this? - Oh, a bankless role. It's like you had Virginia fucking Madsen and you gave her this. - It's so funny because the guy that plays her husband is like the main bad guy from that TV show, DBS Mates, that Mark Cherry did after Desper housewives. - Yes, this is Tom Irwin. - Yes, but like, okay, these characters, they're meant to be horrible people, but oh my gosh. - God, like they're caricatures. - Nell takes care of her mother for apparently her entire life, mind you, I think she says that at some point. And these people won't even leave her the fucking apartment. Like, what is this? - Yeah, I love the problem. I was like, oh, we'll take the cost of the car out of your inheritance. Oh, will you? - All $53 of that AMC gremlin. I'm sure that's really gonna put her back. - The patronize, we need someone to help cooking and cleaning around that. Do you wanna come be our maid? - And look after our shitty, shitty fucking child. I do love that we get the satisfaction of Nell just saying, get out. - Oh yeah, because we'll never see these people again. - No. And we don't in the original film either, right? So I mean, part of this is that we're just table setting who Nell is so that we understand why she might not want to leave the house. - That works in the 63 version because she has nothing to come back to. Here it's just like, okay, so she's in a shitty situation, but like, she has every reason to live now. - But I will say this is probably the best Lily Taylor is in this movie and the most like empathetic she is in this movie. - Well, it's the one piece of screenwriting that works because Eleanor is in a very correct moral place. You feel for her in that situation no matter how, you know, unsubtle it is. It's still like, why would you do this to what appears to be a very nice person? You're immediately on her side. - Mm-hmm, no. So Nell, we've got already the ghostly-esque imagery where there seems to be a breeze that draws her into her dead mother's bedroom. - Oh my gosh. - And the stupidest thing. This, okay, the house hacking into a computer has a hundred hill works because that movie embraces cancer. - It's stupid and the movie knows it. - Yes, it's a dark castle film. This house, calling Eleanor, is so stupid. - And not boo, ringy-dingy-dingy. - It's basically, the idea is that the house calls or say, hey, hey, open your newspaper. There's an ad in there. They might interest you. - Well, but it's also because it's supposed to be Liam Neeson on the other line, so it's also like-- - It's impersonating his voice? - Yes! - Yeah, it learned his voice, which, again, to this, I say, this house is too, it's an issue where the house is too overpowered. - Mm-hmm, well, I mean, we're gonna talk about it, but there's no rules or logic in the way that anything behaves once they get to the house, so there's no stakes as a result because it doesn't make any sense. - I think that's the only reason we kill Owen Wilson in this movie. It still provides some kind of last minute stakes, but it doesn't work. - But I do love the idea of this house calling and being like, open your newspaper to page 68, now look below the triple X sex worker at No Keep Go, keep going, yes, look at the psychology study at Eleanor. (laughing) - She's also not like, oh, like, who are you and how did you get my name? Like, none of that. - And I'm a haunted house, and I have a very particular set of skills. (laughing) - She's just like, she's just like, oh, I'm gonna go on an adventure with this strange person who called me up out of nowhere. - Which are you, you could argue, okay, this is out of desperation because she's literally like, she's about to be homeless, she's just nowhere to go, but at the same time, like, we're not really seeing that in this particular, she seems pretty chill, actually, on the phone, when she's talking to the house. - 100%, I mean, we're definitely talking about the $900, and we as an audience now, ooh, this seems a bit too good to be true. But yeah, I mean, the movie also presents her as a bit of a naive dumb-dumb, but then it doesn't follow through the red line either, right? Like, when she gets to the house, she wants to talk about how she's finally embarking on her grand adventure, but that's not naive, that's not sheltered or innocent, that's just a woman saying, cool, I can finally live. - Yeah, my mom's dead, woohoo. - Exactly. - I've been responsible for my entire world without a second to myself. Now I have a second to myself, and look at me now. It's one of the few scenes that actually kind of works. - Yeah, yeah. I mean, the movie needed more of this kind of stuff for this character, but like a lot more. - Yeah. - Okay, yeah, so then we cut to Mary, who was played by Alex Karamze, I probably mispronounced that. I like this actress, I wish that she was in this film more. - Yeah, because it doesn't even tell them to come back, we'll wait until she gets out of this movie, yes. - I agree, like both her and Todd Field should have been in this movie more, but whatever. - 100%, 'cause then we could have killed people. - We could have killed them! (laughing) - Yeah, that didn't even be cooking, you know, I mean. - Right. - So Mary has selected people for Dr. David Merrow, who is Liam Neeson's character, and you know, we're dropping a bunch of absolute, I'm going to assume this is bullshit, I didn't look it up, but I don't think the Curesee temperament sorter is an actual scale. - I don't know enough to say yes or no to that. (laughing) - Well, if it is, I apologize, but it sounds bullshit. - I was going to say this, this sounds like a lot of made up bullshit that he's pretending to study. - This makes that parapsychologist in the initiation look like he's, you know, developing the Kinsey scale. This is, this is utter bullshit on a monumental scale. - Curesee temperament scale is a real thing. - Oh, okay, fine. (laughing) - I'm just saving you. - I apologize to the Curesee foundation. (laughing) - This is giving a whiff of, you know, heretic exorcist to nonsense. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah, yeah. And it's also establishing him with an ass hat right off the bat, right off the bat because like, okay, I was going to say, is there an ethical issue with what he's doing by presenting this as once? - Oh, yes. - Yes. - Absolutely. - But, okay, I'm sure there have been famous, like, experiments that have, it's almost like the placebo effect, where you think you're getting something, but this is a complete misrepresentation of the study they're doing. And his goal is to also traumatize these people. (laughing) - Yeah, he has brought them there so he can terrorize them. - Yeah. - And then watch how they react to it. - Which, honestly, I think that's a missed opportunity because all he does is he starts like the rumor, you know, about the story and he's like, you know, awaiting for them to spread the tails and get more scared. - Mm-hmm. - I kind of think he should be like having like, traps set up in this house to like, actually scare them. - Well, but then Trace, you'd be asking for the movie to have a villain. - Yeah, that's true. - Well, yeah, I mean, I think it would have been pretty good. And, you know, add a little bit of much-needed tension. If he was doing some shit to kind of gaslight Elinor, but a little bit, like, you know, if that had been him that painted the welcome home Elinor on the wall. - Yes, yes. - And, you know, and then like something else happens that he's like, "Well, that was me, but this wasn't me." - Okay, you'll know what movie we're just talking about now. - House on Haunted Hill. - House on Haunted Hill. - House on Haunted Hill. - You know what I'm saying? I would have never thought you could pair the two that House on Haunted Hill would have been the better movie because I had a lot of problems with that too, but you know what? - Oh, sure. - It turns out to be the better film. - Yeah, I think without question, it's a better movie than this one. - It knows it's a B movie, and it does everything and it's power to be the best B movie- - It's trying to be goofy as hell. - Mm-hmm. - Whereas this is trying to be an A movie and it fails utterly. - Yeah. - Well, and House on Haunted Hill has two really great campy lead performances, and then we've got a bunch of like kind of watered-down duds that we kill off. - Well, also though, because Liam Neeson isn't like, particularly charismatic in this role. - No. - No. - And sorry, Trace, just to clarify, I was agreeing with you that I think it would have been a smarter choice to have made him more nefarious. - Oh, yeah, yeah. - It's just that, as we talked about, Steven Spielberg wouldn't allow for any of these characters to be flawed or interesting. They have to be heroes. - That's disappointing. I mean, I say, you know, you make him more shifty and untrustworthy, and then you have him get his head knocked off by the chip. - That's honestly, he should be the one that gets his head bit off. Like, absolutely. - Absolutely. - He'll be in one Radcliffe once again. - Well, because we then could have killed Luke when he tries to crash the car into the gate. So we're still gonna have that death. - Yes, it has some stakes. Put some dramatic stakes here. - Yeah, 'cause one of my early complaints for this film is that, yeah, we're embarking under the auspices of conducting this experiment. And I think, okay, get me a little bit of Legend of Hell House, where we actually get to see some of the experiment, and the closest we get is Lily Taylor fucking filling out adult coloring book. (laughing) - That was like us. (laughing) - Again, perfect, because comparing this yet again to another movie, Legend of Hell House. So much better. - So much better. - The characters are so well drawn. And you have this excellent flawed protagonist at the center of it, who his personal demons are driving all the other demons in the house. And it just has an engine to it, this film sadly lacks. - I mean, height and attention, by the fact they can't escape this house, and they can't trust each other either. - Mm-hmm, yeah, because we don't really push the paranoia all that for either. - No, not at all. - No, like you get one scene where they argue about each other, well, baby, it was you, well, maybe you did it, and then all of a sudden, that's like forgotten in that scene. - Well, it's also like, so it's like, I think at the halfway point of the film, and it never carries over into the back half. - No. - Mm-hmm. - Okay, so we're still getting nailed to the house. You know, we've got a bunch of dissolves, beautiful scenery. We're introduced to the two caretakers, so there's Mr. Dudley, who is played by Laura's dad, Bruce Dern, and he's Kerma Jini, and very combative when she wants to be led into the law gate. And then we've got Mrs. Dudley, who is played by Mary and Sellies, and she's fantastic. Like, I will say, I think there's a lot that doesn't work about this movie, but watching Nell mimic Mrs. Dudley when she's doing her, like, we lock the gates, no one knows around here. There will be no help. And Nell just mimics that when Dio comes in. - Which, in the dark and the night is like a very, that's from like every adaptation of this, of this story is in the dark and the night. I forgot to mention too, Jerry Goldsmith does the score for this movie. Do we find this score memorable? - I think it hampers the entire proceedings. It's so over the top, and Randy goes, it is once again aiming for that Jurassic Park of haunted house movies, when this really needs some sort of subtle layering and build, but the second anything spooky happens, the orchestra is having multiple orgasms nearby then. (laughs) It doesn't help. - Yeah, so in between meeting the two caretakers, we're also exploring this house, and as Patrick has alluded to, the sets are ginormous. And I do remember when I went to see this in '99, I would have been 17, and I remember thinking, oh wow, the sets are really selling me on just how ornate, how grandiose this is. This is going to be properly epic. So I do think that the sets are accomplishing what they're meant to do, but also you realize in hindsight that it's really distracting from any kind of human element in the film, 'cause you're just constantly thinking, oh, everybody looks so tiny, which makes all of the drama tiny. - Yes, exactly. - Yeah, I think it's also a thing, and like, not that a studio would ever release a movie like this in black and white, but I think it also makes you appreciate the black and white 63 version a lot more because there's just everything so busy. I do agree, the production is on the set design. It looks amazing, but it's also so busy in a way that I think hammers it. - They have to pour so much light into it. It's like the manners built next to giant stadium. - Yeah. - Mm-hmm. - So when you have to light three stories worth of set, there are no dark corners. And no matter how weirdly you color time it, it never creates shadow. There's never an unknown. You see everything. - I will say that's something that I think, I think DeBons had an interview. So like, specifically with the cherub faces on the walls where he wanted it to be more of a thing where you wouldn't actually see them moving. So it was like, you would think maybe they moved, but you weren't 100% sure. And that was very much lost when they were like, no, no, no, we're gonna CGI these things and make them move. (laughing) - Yeah. - If they had changed the direction of their face or their facial expressions when someone passed by them between shots or something, yes, absolutely. - Yeah, I think it kind of works once when we're in Eleanor's bedroom and, you know, they're normal and then something happens and then we go back to them and they're all kind of like, looking a little bit slack-jawed into the side. - Yeah. - But at the same time, they also kind of just look like weird glory holes everywhere. (laughing) - No, but you're right, Joe, we do that. We do that the first time we like really like focus in on the things above her fireplace, I think in her room. - Yeah. - But then after that scene, it's pretty much, no, these things are moving in full CGI for screaming at Eleanor. - Yeah, yeah. But I'll agree, as much as I think the sets look really impressive, they're just also so fucking busy. Like everything looks threatening or something weird is happening on every part of the set, which means, yeah, it's either completely dulled down because you've seen it once and then you've seen it 50 times by the end of the film or there's no respite. So your eye is just constantly looking at things, but not in that ooh, easter eggy kind of way. It's just almost an eyesore, like it's too busy, it's over decorated. - Well, here's the thing, in the book. Trace, you said you haven't read the book. Joe, have you read it? - I know. (laughing) - What kind of excuse were you trying to think up? - It was one of those things where I know so much about it. I feel like I've read it, but I've never actually heard it. - That's fair. Okay, so what makes the house so unsettling, unsettling, I should say, to the people that enter it, is there's just something not right about it. Like it's not built correctly. Like the walls don't kind of join in a way they're supposed to. Everything is a little, it's a little off-kilter. - Right. - It's something you notice in your mind's eye, not overtly, but it's enough to make you uncomfortable. And here it's just like, well, here's some screaming children's woodcarvings in your room. Here's some bed posts that look like tentacles. - Yes. - Here's the amazement of books in a room filled with water. And it's like, none of this is making me feel uncomfortable. This is like, what the hell's happening here? Why does this look more like Alice in Wonderland? - Right, yeah. If you had told me that Tim Burton had directed this, I would believe certain touches feel like what we do get in, yeah, Sleepy Hollow and Alice in Wonderland. - Yeah, and I mean, The Out of Your Heart is in a perfect movie, but I feel like what works is there's just something wrong with the house. Like, at first blush, it just seems like, you know, that's a nice house, but you know, it's got those funky windows that look like eye staring down at you. - But it's not, it's not overt, it's subtle. There's nothing subtle about this house. - One thing Amityville has going for it that this cannot is that the Amityville Horror House is a trap. It's too good to be true. How can you get this much house for this little money? And then suddenly they can't even afford that little money. They are in a sinkhole financially. And it's a great financial metaphor for owning a house, something almost everyone at the time could understand even if they didn't own a house. They knew the financial pitfalls of it. This movie has some of its origins in terms of this adaptation within the Winchester House, which people have been trying to make a movie into for so long, they finally did it and it flopped. - With Helen Mira, no less. - Yes. - Collecting a paycheck, we love a goddess who runs a mortgage pay. (laughing) But there are all these things that are origin stories for what they want to do here, but they don't quite hit it. And the one that really strikes me is mentioned in King's Dance Macabre and that's Ann River Cydons, the house next door. The problem with the house next door is that it's built on an evil rock and it's unnatural. No house is meant to be there, no humans should be there. And every family that moves in gets twisted by the location. And in here, we're not given any of that. The house is bad, I guess, but it all comes down to this one guy murdering local children. He's turned into a Freddy Krueger, that's fine, but how did he fucking out that house? - But that's the thing, is like, yeah, 'cause the house isn't bad, it's the ghost of Ukraine, but who also can control the house, I think. - It's so nebulous, it doesn't make any sense. - Again, that guts the story because the story is, it is the house that's bad. - Yes. - Yeah. - The house itself is cursed, it is ruined everyone, every single person that has ever entered its door. - But we don't have an origin point for it. And the only reason we know it's super-hotted is because the main guy is still hanging around, and he's trapped a bunch of ghost children there. - Oh my god, ghost children, ghost children! - Yeah, and I think in hindsight, we're supposed to look at this and say, oh, a bunch of that was never meant to be scary because it's ghost children, and they were helping Eleanor, but also not interesting, not making for a good movie. - Oh my god, the ghost child gave her Princess Leia's hairdo. That's terrible. - Oh my god. Gina, it's the worst. - I mean, I think Theo says it best when she arrives in her cherry red convertible when she says, "It's Charles Foster Kane meets the monsters." It's like, okay, the monsters is probably a little bit strong, but this does feel closer to Charles Foster Kane than any of the scary things that we've just mentioned. - But in terms of haunted houses, I'm more creeped out by the haunted mansion at Disneyland than I am by this. It has a stronger through line. It tells me why there's ghosts there. This is, I hope you'll find this all scary in the end sort of film-breaking storytelling. - Yeah. Okay, well, why don't we talk about Catherine Zeta-Jones, because at least we might have something positive to say about that. So we've mentioned how the film doesn't seem to want to commit to her bisexuality. We do get a very literal explicit acknowledgement of it. Yes, if we want to look at this as titillation, if we want to see this as pandering to a primarily male audience, we can. But technically Theo is bisexual in this film. She admits that she has a boyfriend and a girlfriend. - Yeah, truthfully, this is something I actually forgot. I thought they completely wiped this out of the film. But yeah, because we don't do anything with it. And we can talk about it more in the moments when she interacts with Nell and when she's kissing her and stuff. But it feels more motherly than romantic in this film, which is it neuters any kind of eroticism to the relationship between them. - Yeah, because she immediately comes off as, well, we're gonna be BFFs. Whereas in earlier versions, it's like, well, we might end up sleeping together at some point. Like, I'm definitely gonna hit on you at some point. - Yeah, mm-hmm. When we talked about the original film, we definitely read Nell as closeted queer. I'm like, how she identified, we don't know. But she seemed to have an interest in Theo and particularly her physical affections. And here there's this moment where the two women are checking out each other's rooms and Theo changes clothes because Catherine Zeta-Jones changes her clothes in pretty much every scene in this film. But you had to admit, she has a fantastic wardrobe. - Oh my god, yeah. - I mean, Catherine Zeta-Jones is stunningly gorgeous and she's dressed like a supermodel in this movie. - I'd say I like Catherine Zeta-Jones in this movie a lot, but I feel like the character is just Catherine Zeta-Jones. - Yes, maybe. - Yeah, I would agree with you. It definitely seems meant to be played by her. - Yeah, yeah. Like, if you told me this was the same character from entrapment, I probably would believe you. (laughing) At least in entrapment, like she does have a specific character with a specific purpose. Now it's all fucking ridiculous, but there's a drive to that character. And in here, why is she there? Well, why are any of them there? 'Cause they don't sleep. And then one of them, an entire ghost house made a phone call, it's just terrible. Damn it, it's not good. Catherine Zeta-Jones is gorgeous in this though. - Oh, yes, yeah. But in this moment, it's interesting because I do think that this is the closest we get to acknowledging there could be something. Like it feels as though in early draft and then we just lost everything that comes after it because Nell is looking at like, basically Nell checks out her rack when Theo changes. - Okay, yes, no, we get a full, it's a full frame tit shot of Catherine Zeta-Jones cleavage. (laughing) But it's meant to be like, we're in Nell's gaze. So like this feels very intentional, but then it's just dropped after this. - Yeah, and Theo seems to acknowledge it, which is why she then says, do you have anybody, do you have a husband, do you have a boyfriend, a girlfriend? And then she comes and she picks something off of Nell's shirt and Nell full fledged recoils from this as though she can't stand to be touched by a woman. And I think we could read this as she maybe hasn't been intimate with anybody since her mum passed or maybe even long before that. - Okay, the impression she's never been intimate with anybody. - Yeah, but I mean, but I could see someone easily reading this as gay panic. - Exactly, or even like, I don't know if I like this and I don't want to explore it. And it's another one of those things where you think, that could be a character choice. We could do something with that and we don't do anything with it. - Nope. - Nope. - Like my queer reading for this film is this fucking scene. - Yeah, that's it. - And then it just ends. - I think you could, and we can talk about it more when we get to like the climax of the film. I think you could argue maybe it's kind of their enthio. - Right. - Because it's like, why the fuck does she care about Eleanor so much? Like what, like why does she care? - I mean, I get the impression that she is fascinated by her because she's so obviously sheltered. - Yeah. - Yes. - Well, 'cause that's why I think when she's like, at the dinner table later, you know, she's like, oh, sex, I feel like she's saying that mostly for Nell. - Trying to be provocative. - Yeah, yeah. - And she's trying to feel her out 'cause she didn't know anyone who's like Nell. No one in that room has met a ton of Nell's because you don't meet Nell in general. She's trapped with her mother and her failing health. She has been in that small apartment for that long and she just doesn't experience the world. - Oh, yeah, and Theo has a whirlwind romance with her boyfriend and girlfriend, but they both hate each other. So she's gotta get her entertainment somewhere. - Right. - Exactly. - She loves to cause the drama. - But I think it does illustrate another problem that this movie ultimately has, which is that everybody acts like Nell is special and this would have made sense if Nell had some kind of latent psychic abilities like she does in the original or if, you know, she was just more interesting or something. But like, when Dr. Mero shows up, he's so excited to meet Nell because she's the most susceptible we later discover. But like, same with Theo. Like, why is Theo so engaged with this woman? Is it just because, oh, they've never met someone so sheltered? Like, that's not particularly interesting, but the movie frames everything like, oh, Nell is the chosen one of this film. She's the Mary Sue of everything. And it's just like, but she's also really fucking boring. And she is boring. She kind of like sort of comes off as childish, but, you know, also just kind of a stick in the mud. And as someone who has struggled with insomnia at various points of my life, I am not quite sure why that would make me more susceptible to being terrorized by a scientist for, for whatever, whatever it is he is, he is trying to research. I mean, maybe it's because you get to a certain point where you're so strung out on lack of sleep that maybe you start seeing things. That's the only thing I can think of that he has deemed Nell to be especially susceptible to whatever it is he's going to do to her. - Right, but then he ultimately doesn't do much. And that's the problem with the movie as a whole. Each character doesn't do very much. Things just happen to them because the script says, and now this happens. There are no character driven moments once they enter the house. And that's a big problem 'cause all but eight minutes take place inside the house. - Yeah, yeah. Well, why don't we talk about this first dinner sequence? So Trace you alluded that Theo is trying to eel Nell out. And then of course we've also got Dr. Merrill laying out the rules, but this is also where Mary gets, I don't know what musical instrument this is. - Oh, it's a harpsichord. - It's a harpsichord. - Mero says it. He says like, "Stop playing with the harpsichord, Mary." (laughing) - Something we're always telling Mary. - Oh, Mary, it's a harpsichord. - That game of Mary. - Stop playing with the harpsichord. Everywhere we go, Mary, it's the goddamn harpsichord. - Everywhere we go, it's the Pirates of the Caribbean. - I'm sorry, really quick. We don't have to like talk about it. I just want to say 'cause we are introduced to the purgatory wall art piece statue sculpture thing that will play a big part in the finale, but I really hate Nell's line of, well, I studied purgatory. I was there once for 11 years. (laughing) - That line falls about as stiff as that fucking door looks. - I think it cuts immediately after. It's like it's waiting for a reaction and then we cut later, but yeah, anyway, so dinner time. (laughing) - No, I mean, here's the thing. We can bounce around a fuck time because at the end of the day, it's all rinse, lather, repeat throughout most of those films. So I love to talk about the purgatory door because it's one of the many doors that looks like it should weigh about two tons and people just push it open like it's made a sandpaper. (laughing) - It's so fucking huge. Every door around there is so gigantic. - Yeah. - It's grandeur, but then it never really is able to harness that grandeur for a lot of meaning. It's a lot of missed opportunity. - Honestly, they should have used more crane shots in this house. They have the space for it. - True. - It is rather tightly shot. - Yep, mm-hmm. - In a way that speed is, like speed is, has a lot of masters and tight close-ups on people to convey tension. And in here, it's like to bond his forgotten everything he's ever learned. He just goes into trying to make sure that every shot shows as much of that house and believe me, it looks great, but it's all for not in my mind. - I feel like another movie we have not brought up that has similar themes and does it much better is The Shining. - Right, yeah. - RIP Shelley DuBall, Moment of Silas. But because you've got that great shot of Wendy and Danny in the hedge maze. And it's an overhead shot and they look so tiny. - Yeah, right. - And that just that single shot just puts across you. Oh, they are trapped here. - So what we should have had was a shot where we do like an overhead shot of the house, but we like remove the roof just to see. (laughs) - Like sure, why not? - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, because I'll admit, like when we see Neil running down the hallways after that one nightmare sequence or even at the end of the film where everybody has sort of scattered, it still kind of feels like there's only like two hallways and then that flooded book hallway. We've seen the exterior shots and this place looks ginormous, but at the end of the day, it feels like there's just really two or three big cavernous rooms at a couple of hallways. - Oh yeah, it's the hallway we're running through. And that's again, whenever Hugh Crane is chasing her, whatever, at the end. And then we just have like the roof kind of like, you know, collapsing behind her. And I was like, okay, but why is the ghost chasing her? - Can it just like be there? Like, can it just be there? - I mean, why can't it just like, you know, pull a poltergeist house and just collapse it on itself? - Well, 'cause I think Hugh Crane likes the house too much. I gotta destroy the house. - But the house is like bubblegum. It breathes it more, you know. - He can just re-inflate it. - Yeah, you know, you have collapsing on her, you know, crusher, whatever, and then reshape itself. I mean, it sounds stupid as hell, but so does it, so is this movie. - But that's like, okay, so like, when she sees her second or maybe third ghost in the curtains. - Yeah. - And it's like, oh, it's when the ghost goes through her, which I think is maybe the most sexual moment in this film. - She looks like she's orgasming, but it's meant to be a ghost child. - Yeah, but the ghost child is like, "He's coming, he's coming!" - And it's like, but it's also like, he is the house, why isn't he just here? Like, how does he not-- - He's just here all the time. - How does I know everything that's going on in this house? - It's the difference, it's weird that this comes out after the Frightners, because the Frightners kind of pulls this sort of rug out from underneath the audience, where here's a person who clears ghosts from houses, but he takes the ghost to the house to pull hydrinks, and then comes up against a ghost that while it's kind of haunting a particular house is doing it for fun to get his girlfriend hot, and he's kind of stuck up against the wall unless he does something really pronounced, and then he's dangerous outside of being on the wall of a house. And yet, this movie just really believes that if you move parts of a house, it's scary every single time, and it just runs out of ways to do that about a third of the way in. And it's like, she beats away an iron griffin with the leg of a fucking chair, and then it's like, I've had enough. Why? You don't have nerve-ending motherfucker? - Okay, the griffin statue coming up, I think that's the worst, it's really bad. Like, I don't, it's not threatening at all, and it doesn't look good. - Here's the thing, if that had been occurring in another 1999 film, like "The Mummy", we would have all been completely fine with it, because that fits within that world, in this film it feels like, what the fuck are we doing? Why hasn't this happened before, and why doesn't it happen again? It's so out of place. - And why isn't it just killing her? I mean, Hugh Creme gets so pissed that Luke defaces a portrait of himself that he decapitates him immediately. So, we know this is something he just can do, unless it's supposed to be like, oh, because it's his great, great granddaughter, there's a-- - But she's not scared of him at that point. - Oh, right, God. - He's Freddy Krueger, he's Freddy Krueger. - God, I forgot about that twist, and the noise that came out of me, when she's like, I was great, great granddaughter, I'm just-- - It's a wet fart. - And then she pulls that, that she has to help now, because it's about family, and I'm just like-- - Ooh. - Okay, so here's, 'cause she discovers all of that, like, between scenes or something, because when she tells everyone else about it, she's telling the audience, that we do not know this. - Yeah, 'cause at this point, we've tried to escape from the house, Wook has crashed into the gate, we brought them back into the house, because we realized Elinor is not with us anymore, and then we discover her in the nursery, and she's just like, exposition dump, by the way, it's all about family, I need to stay here, this is my house now, goodbye. - And she cares so much about these kids, oh my God, when she first finds the secret room, following the bloody footprints, M, - Yes. - Okay, so this is when it's very clear, okay, hey, these kids were child laborers, and whatever, but there are so many books and logs, and they're that probably could give them a lot more information, and we just were done with it there, so she doesn't, like, no one else goes into this room to look at it, to corroborate Elinor's story, like, it's, why, it's only here for the scene, so she can look at one log book, when there's hundreds of them around her. - Mm-hmm, which just happens to be alpha. - That scene typifies almost everything wrong with this particular movie. She follows this trail of bloodstained footprints, which of course, disappear, fine, I don't care, but there's no build to it. There's no danger at any point. The mystery is kind of taken away because she doesn't have to look for anything, it just leads her right to the one piece of information she needs, like she's the hound dog and Lady in the Tramp using old reliable for clothes. - I will say, there is, 'cause Scary Movie 2 does a lot of gags from this movie, and there's one particular one that I always love, it's whenever the ghost is talking to Cindy, it's like, the music room, the music room, it's like, where are you? I can check the fucking music room. (laughing) Well, okay, so obviously we're coming down pretty hard on this film. - Can we talk about a sequence? - I don't think it's entirely successful, but I do think it's one of the better action sequences, which is the one Gina has alluded to, which is when Nell gets imprisoned by the bed. - I know we joked about the eyes earlier, but I actually do like the way this looks. - I would like it if it was the only time it happened. - Bear. - I think as far as on a special effects level, it's okay, but I'm distracted by how awful Lily Taylor is in this scene. Like I don't buy for a second that she feels like she's in mortal danger. - The timing's all off because she has to scream for three solid minutes without taking a breath somewhere. - Well, it's also because this is also a point where everyone else still thinks she's the crazy one. Like they don't believe that this house is haunted. And then they finally bust in and they're kind of like, huh, I guess she didn't do this herself. (laughing) - She didn't cool aid man her way through several walls while being pinned to a bed by tentacle monsters. - I love that what Kid Minces Liam Neeson is getting drowned in a koi pod by this giant fucking statue. - Okay, so I think in concept, when it starts vomiting, okay, so everyone, if you haven't seen this movie, like there's this giant statue in a koi pond that's a human face and it just grabs him in this CGI effect and drowns him. But then the statue starts vomiting blood. And I think it looks cool, but then I'm also like, why aren't we just killing him? - Right. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Again, you guys had nailed it earlier in that we should have killed off the people who were taking care of the house, the two assistants, or at least one of the assistants comes back. So there's a bit more of a body count, but they're not doing it. - For fear, they're going to get an R. It'll become too much like a slasher movie. And they can't, for some reason, dream up of bloodless ways to dispatch people in a house that should have a ton of crazy, weird traps. - We do have, I mean, I think there's a moment that I think is kind of creepy whenever Nell first sees the first Mrs. Crane's like hanged body above the spiral staircase, but then they do that thing where like, oh, no one else can see it, so they all think she's crazy and that she doesn't tell them what she saw, but I think visually, I think it's an evocative image. - Well, okay, let's talk about then the other, what I'm gonna say is the other good sequence in this film, which is when Dr. Merrow, Liam Neeson, has to climb up the staircase to get Nell because she has gone up there to investigate the ghost that she saw earlier, and the staircase starts to fall apart under him because I legitimately do think this is the closest we get to a tense moment in this film. - I would agree with you there. - Yeah, yeah. - But it's the one thing that Yandabant has been known to be able to do, which is take a person in peril and be able to build tension out of mechanics you understand, gravity. He can only get so far up, and every time he gets farther up, his weight is pulling what he's climbing down. Those are mechanics I can understand, even a six-year-old can probably figure it out. It's all the other stuff that he can't quite grasp how to make it meaningful, or tension-filled, scary. - Well, shocking. - I do think there is one good jump scare in this movie, and I remember it got me when I was a kid, and it didn't get me today, but it's 'cause I remembered it really stuck in my brain. It's when she's digging through the ash tray of the fireplace and pulls out the skeleton. - Okay. - I think that's pretty good. I think it's funny that she runs away and that she's just running and screaming for the rest of the movie. But I think that's pretty good. - And it's fine. (laughing) - It's a golf club. By the way, I'm sorry, I'm going back to the children in the sheets. So I actually have David Sealth's, no, hear this. So-- - That's not a search that you did on Pornhub. This is, that's what you're calling a sequence in this movie. - Yeah, yeah, the children in the sheets. As read by Trace Therma. - Screenwriter David Sealth, and I quote, "Well, Steven Spielberg felt like we needed to deliver "the goods from modern audiences. "Hence, where once curtains merely billowed, "now they ripple with the ghosts of children. "Steven and his daughter were playing with this sheet of silk "and it made this impression on her little face." And so Steven, out of the blue, says, "We need a scene where there's a spirit "of a child in the sheets." - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. - Not the way they do it. Again, to harken back to a reference to the mummy, the mummy's effects are not better than what you see in this movie. They are more judicious about when they use it. And they use it for a very particular effect. Like they know they can only do seven minutes worth of hardcore special effects. So when they choose to make a mummy scream at you and his jaw fall off, they're gonna make the most out of it. And in here, they just paint CGI over anything that they want to in the hopes that that will be scary. Whereas if you had painted a kid's face white and put it underneath the sheets, it probably wouldn't work better. - Yeah. I mean, it's kind of cool when it moves from the curtain to her bed sheet, but it still looks like shit. - Yeah, and it looked like shit in '99 too, to be clear. It's not like, "Oh wow, you know, we can look back with rose color glasses and say this was cutting edge technology." It's like 17 year old me said, "Oh, that looks like hot garbage." - And that's why I think, so like, you know, I did watch like the 28 minute "Making Up" feature, which is by the way, like narrated by Kevin Zeta-Jones in a shallow, devolved, like very, healthy, or tight role, it's wild. But again, like the scene with the bed, like they actually like, you know, have the house like bending down to make some eyes. I'm sure it was enhanced by CGI, but they're actually like pieces of architecture that are on like rigs and moving. Like these are real things. But then you have, again, like the CGI statue arm driving Liam Neeson, you have actually any big arm, the fucking fist that punches Lily Taylor, like all looks so bad. - Very bad, yeah. - Oh, what about, okay, whenever Lily Taylor makes it back into the carousel room. And then she like starts, like she gets the teeth of her great, great grandmother, but then she also like gets pregnant. - Yeah, the baby. - Oh my God, that shot where like her tummy grows. - Yeah. - Oh, dear God. - But also, I'm just thinking of the sequence from "House on Haunted Hill 99", where we trap Jeffrey Rush in the circular room that drives him mad. - Right. Although, I mean, I do, I think this is the most interesting looking room in the entire place. - Sure, but we don't do anything with it. Like, Gina, you said it earlier, the carousel, but we don't even have fucking horses in this room. It's just a room that goes around. - It's just this rotating room with like you shrieking, colliping music playing. - Which why? - Okay, the weirdest choice I thought was that when the end credits start, that's the song that plays, yeah. - It's like, remember this? We don't, we don't, you love this room the best. - But it's also like, you're not using Jerry Goldsmith's score, you're using collipy. And it also is tonally like not, - It doesn't work. - Matching the ending of this movie. - No. - No, it is baffling. I'll confess, I think I also sometimes confuse this film with the Katie Holmes one. - Katie Holmes. - Oh, don't be afraid of the dark. - Don't be afraid of the dark. - Yeah. - 'Cause isn't that like a big old gothic house where she's like worried about the fucking kids the whole time too? - But there's monsters in that movie. And it's a region. - That is my horror origin story is the TV movie. Don't be afraid of the dark. I saw it on a 4.30 in the afternoon and it freaked me out to the point where I never thought I would be able to close my eyes again. So I've never been able to bring myself to watch that remake. But the original scared the living hell out of it. - Oh, all right. - Joe, guess who the kid is and the remake of Don't Be Afraid of the Dark? - Who is it? - Bailey Madison. - Oh, really? - Mm-hmm. - Okay. - Pretty little liars, summer, summer school or whatever. - Summer school or whatever. - The strangers too. - Yeah. - God. - Okay. So I've got a couple of bullet points. Like we've given up on covering this movie essentially. We're not doing it in order. - Well, as you say, I think one of you said, you know, a bunch of stuff happens and also nothing happens at the same time. - Yeah, yeah. - Well, I think we could talk about whatever we want, but then let's actually talk about then like the climax of the film. - Yeah, yeah, for sure. So Joe, what's your first bullet point? - Okay. So one of my bullet points is there's this moment where Nell is looking through old photo albums, right? This is when she's starting to piece it together. This is family, she eventually sees the locket that she's wearing that was her mother's and clearly belonged to Carolyn, who was the second wife of Ukraine. But as we're flipping through this photo album, we see an old picture of Ukraine. My bullet point is, is this black face? (laughing) 'Cause what the fuck is going on with this guy's wrinkled, pruney-looking face? - It's like, Jacob Marley from like Christmas Carol is like what we're doing here. But I like your interpretation better. - Yeah, I love that like, you can't put it enough to the audience that this is a bad guy. We gotta make it, we gotta make it like one of those Halloween decorations you get where like you shift the picture and like it turns into like a skull face. - Right. - But I also like, 'cause the whole like the story that they are told is that, you know, Ukraine was this lovable textile owner who just-- - Right, everyone thought he was so great and secretly he was killing kids and you're like, this man with this house, you thought he was an upstanding citizen? - The portrait up at the top of the stairs, he looks fucking evil. Like nothing about this man gives warm cuddly business tycoon. - There's no mystery to it. 'Cause as soon as you see the guy, you're like, well that-- - That's an evil man. (laughing) - It's fucking insane. - You can really feel the shifts in the reshoots at various points because they have to drop these little ADR nuggets throughout it. So Eleanor is trying to convince Theo that this town ledger proves that they were stealing children and to make the sound of children in the house. He was stealing kids and offing them when he didn't care for them anymore. - Hundreds of them. And then Catherine Zeta-Jones is going, this is a leap. I think you're putting too much into this. I think you need to go to sleep. And then finally there's a completely different Catherine Zeta-Jones voice who goes, go to bed, like where did that come from? (laughing) - Go to a fucking music room. Go to the fucking music room. - When they're around the table and she mentioned and Catherine Zeta-Jones goes, sex, there's an ADR from Owen Wilson dead. He does not say, it's like they're trying to rescue it by throwing a bunch of stuff at it in the hopes that if there's enough glitter, you won't notice the shit sandwich you're eating and it doesn't work. - Okay, I've got a bullet point and it's actually way earlier in the film. But I think the only thing that really tries to recreate something from the original film and it is the scene where Nell and Theo were on the bed together and they're hearing the knocking, the rapping. And then oops, it's just Luke. Like, but the door buckles in. - A little bit, yes, but I think I keep going back to the way Robert Weiss shot that original film where we have all those Dutch angles and we're doing a lot of rapid fire cutting and this doesn't do that. And then we also get that horrible CGI cold breath. - Oh yeah. - Oh God. - Yeah. Like you can see Yandabon moving the camera around and he's trying to create almost this omniscient POV of ooh, something's in there with them. It's mysterious and I appreciated that. But it's also, I don't know, it felt very pedestrian. Like it's something I would have expected from somebody making their first scary movie. - Okay, we passed that scene when you were going through your actual, like when we were sitting with the plot summary and we didn't even mention it because it's not memorable. - No, no, it really isn't. - Here's a scene, here's something that kind of shows the lack of competence, let's say, in structure and pacing and what they're trying to, you know, whatever kind of tension they're trying to build with the audience, there is a pretty iconic scene in the original movie and it's directly out of the book where Theo and Nell are in the same room together. They're actually-- - Who's holding my hand? - Who's holding my hand? - Yes. - They recreate that scene and do not establish beforehand that she thinks someone is holding her hand. - No, yeah. - Like it works because there is another, Theo is in there with her, but Theo is not holding her hand. - Yeah. - And here she just kind of, she just kind of falls out of bed and says, who was holding my hand? - Okay, wait, yeah. I literally wrote in my notes, this is my bullet point. This is the recreation of the who was holding my hand scene but Theo isn't there so it doesn't work. - Yeah, well and there's no precedent for it so it's just, oh, she gets tossed and then she haphazardly says, who was holding my hand and then we just move on. - It's like they wanted to separate because they had to for legal reasons that they wanted to be very certain this is not a remake of the movie, of the original movie but yet they dropped these clumsy Easter eggs. - For whom, I don't know. - Well, but it's also because so Lily Taylor is stuck narrating things for the audience by just saying things out loud. Like honestly, one of the biggest, like most egregious examples for this is whenever she, right before she gets the door punches her, which, okay, it's terrible. - You know, you put it that way, it sounds stupid. - Yeah, right before she's trying to open this door and then there's a smell and she, you know, she goes, oh, what's that smell and I'm like, bitch. (laughing) Who are you saying this to? - Oh my God. - I mean, we have obviously talked about how badly she is done by this film, but I think the only line of dialogue she has in the entire back half of the film, like if she doesn't say the word child in her line of dialogue, it's like she's not getting paid. - No. (laughing) - No, I think her absolute worst line of dialogue comes in the climax, so I will save it for when we actually talk about it. - I've already said, I've already said what mine is. (laughing) - Well, how about this? Before we talk about the ending, let's talk about Luke's death, because it was the only part of the film that worked for me back in '99. - I was gonna say, it's the only good part of the movie. - And not because it's like, oh, I wanna see Luke Wilson get decalvedate, because it's legitimately like, oh, fuck. - Finally, we're cooking. And it's like the last 15 minutes of the movie. - But then it doesn't build after that. - No. - Like, it's just fucking CGI Hugh Crane ghost yelling it now. (laughing) - Yeah, but I do wanna say, like, we talked about the monstrosity of these sets. I love the check-offs line-headed flu that we introduced earlier on in the near-miss, and Luke being like, whoo, imagine if it had had a gotten me, like, I do think that we've actually structured that well, and it pays off in a satisfying way, because the buildup to, you know, okay, we're getting shit stuck in the windows, trying to break them, and then he defaces that portrait, and then we take a magic carpet ride, decapitation. - Well, it's, okay, so the close-up shot we get at the portrait that's been defaced to, it's very beauty and the beast, the Disney one, when we have, like, the clawed portrait of the prince. But, yeah, I do like, I like the way this is done, you know, the rug pulling him. I love the explosion of ash and bones after he gets decapitated, and the decapitation itself, as quick as it is, is strikingly effective. - Yeah, but A, why does he go over and start defacing the picture when, up until this point, he's like, I don't know, I think this is all BS. - Right. - Suddenly, there's stuff I can't explain. You know what will solve this problem? I'm gonna take a candlestick to that painting. - Mm-hmm. - How did you square that fucking circle? - Hey, I'm just gonna say, though, when they're out there by the gate, trying to, like, break it down, and it's not going, climb the fucking fence and walk the nine miles back to town. Like, that is not different. You can climb that fucking fence. There's not barbed wire at the top. There are, it does kind of curve in, but, like, it's not impenetrable. - It's not the Hell Knight level of intimidating gate. - No. - The only good part of that gate sequence is when part of it falls off and nearly stabs him in the top of the head. - Which again, which we should have had. - Could've done that. - Would've been awesome. - You know what, you bring back that, you bring back Todd Fields' character, you say, oh, he's back, and you see it, you see, like, his car, why isn't he coming in? - And they immediately die. - And they go out there and check, he's got the fucking spikes through his head. - Yeah, right. - Why not do that? - Okay, so the logic in this movie, we've already said, is like, there's not a lot of logic. How about, so right after Luke's death, you know, they're all freaking out, like, oh my God, Luke, and Nell's idea is, well, Kran used to play hide-and-seek with the kids, so we have to hide. (laughing) - Oh my God, she just pulls this shit out of the air. - Justice, just like, you know, I'm related to them. Well, now it's up to me to escort the children to, you know, the children's souls to heaven. (laughing) - The children's souls department. Wait until the daytime when the house seemingly has no power. - Yeah, it just, yeah, it's so frustrating. So now my question for you folks, if we had to establish some rules about what the house can and can't do, or what Ukraine's ghost can and can't do, do you think we could have sold some of this finale a little bit better? Like, if we had a said, okay, we're doing some research in the nursery and we discover that Ukraine is afraid of daylight, or he's, you know, super afraid of family, and he won't invite anybody for Christmas. We can use that. Would it go down better? - I mean, I don't know if it would go down better, but I feel like at least giving some characterization to Ukraine would do something. - Yeah, 'cause I mean, I hate the Rorschag ghost thing at the end of "House on Haunted Hell 99." I think it looks bad, it doesn't work well, but I'm still gonna say it works better than this fucking Ukraine thing that we're dealing because at least there we know that it'll gobble you up and it'll turn your face into somebody's distorted voice and so on. Here it's just like, okay, we need to lure Ukraine's ghost to the purgatory door, an oopsie knell just gets caught and becomes collateral damage. - But why do you have to lure him? Isn't he the spirit of the house? - But okay, but his spirit comes out of the portrait that was knocked down in "Scratch Catherine's Data Jones" earlier. So it's like, okay, well... - Why not say he's trapped in the portrait and the house is like partially responding to him or something? - Yeah, sure. - And it's like, oh, when the portrait falls off the wall, then that's Ukraine's ability to now come out. He's not locked in the picture anymore. - Some fucking, just anything. - Give me anything. - It wouldn't make this better, but it would, I mean, it would explain something that I don't care about. - I mean, I feel like the ending would have been much more poignant if we got the impression that Nell very much wanted to die. - Yeah, right. - But I did not get that impression. So why she's like, finally, my soul's at peace. She like sends the heaven with these ghost children. - Okay, but before this happens, we have to have Lily Taylor give like a mini speech to Hugh Green's ghost that is just staring at her and letting her speak for some ungodly reason. - Because she's not scared of it, Trace. - She's not scared of it. - She first says, the children name me, and I'm gonna set them free, which I think is supposed to be like a rousing, like, yeah, I don't wanna get her, but my least favorite line that she has to give. Well, I'm family grandpa and I've come home. - Oh my God, yeah, there's that and it's about family. And it's like, who's family? Like the children are not your family. - Jesus Christ. And then Vin Diesel, Kool-Aid man's through the wall with Corona's for everybody. Like, is that supposed to be inspiring? Are we supposed to be like, yeah, now you sacrifice yourself for these ghost children. - But it's because she's their surrogate mother again. Her life is fulfilled because she now has a family of a hundred bastards. - Oh my God. - Which again, Freddy Kruegerville, Patrick. - She was born into a life of service and she's gonna die in a life of service. - Yeah, but the movie wants to treat it like a good thing. - Good thing, this is what she died. She died as she lived. - Yeah. - And it's like, that's like depressing. (both laughing) But not depressing in the way that the original book and movie end, which-- - No, but there's like some, there's a dissonance there though, because again, the film treats this as heroic and we should be happy about this. - Yeah, but then even in the final moments, right? Okay, so everything is done. Nella's dead, we walk out to the gate and the Dudley's come in. And then the movie just ends with Theo and Dr. Merrill walking out, like, how am I supposed to feel? Because moments ago, you wanted it to be like an uplifting thing, but this is telling me like, oh, it's so sad. - No, but the last line is the Dudley's making a crack about a city people. And it's like. - This is not a city people problem, but I'm sorry, on the note of CGI though, the image of Nell's ghost, like rising to heaven with these ghost children swirling around her and she's like, "Ew, what is this?" Like, just kill her. - No, we have to know that she ascended to heaven, Trace. - And she's at her soul's at peace. - But was it a plan? Was her plan, I'm going to stand in front of this ghost and then he's gonna get trapped in the purgatory door? - Well, okay, 'cause she dies by getting knocked into the door. So she gets like Gwen Stacy with this purgatory door. - Yeah. - Basically what happens. But he gets in the door, but then like a skeleton that's on the door grabs him and pulls him in. So is the door not attached in the house? I thought he could control the fucking house. But so this door is actually purgatory? - Maybe. - But also let's take this back to the reveal that it was the house that called her and told her to look in the newspaper. - So was that supposed to be? - The children, I think. - Oh my God. - The children mimicked? - Well, because why would the house want her back? - I was gonna say, why would Hugh Crane be calling her to the house? - Yeah, exactly. I think I just had an aneurysm or a stroke. - Like? - Because what the fuck? - A stroke-urysm. (laughing) - To be, I'm sorry, so the way Hugh Crane is defeated is that he flies into Ello to kill her but inadvertently flies right into this purgatory door where he is trapped forever. - Yes. - Correct. - 'Cause of door. - 'Cause of convenience. - Because someone saw the devil's advocate and was like, I liked that painting thing. So let's do that with the door. - He really shouldn't have added a door to purgatory as part of his house. - Yeah. - That's the thing, it's like, don't you think Hugh of all people should know? I should probably stay away from that door a little bit. - I should probably have boarded that door up a long time ago. - Let me tackle her from the side and he was enraged. He was so angry. He just couldn't help himself. - God, I love that we are trying to logic retcon this movie as though anybody gave it any effort. - I need to go back to this, Elodora was called to the house. (laughing) Who called her? - I think it was the kids. - And did they instinctively know, oh, your mom died. She's not doing anything now. They've been waiting this entire time. - Did they see the mother's obituary and say, you know, that was the time? - They had to know about the advertisement in the newspaper too. But okay, at least we know they can use phones because the ghost children are in the spirits of the cherub carving things and they have hands. So theoretically, one of them could grab a phone. (laughing) - Oh my God, stop. - Do we ever see a phone in the house? There's no phones, they establish there's no phones. - That is true. - And that only Liam Neeson has a cell phone. - Fuck, fuck, how the fuck are they calling? - They have fucked this movie up 12 ways to Sunday and we just verified it. Like think of how much leaps of logic we just had to do just to get Elodora to the fucking house. - Wait, what in the original, all she did was see the ad in the paper and says, that sounds interesting. I think I'll call 'cause I don't have anything better to do right now. - Yeah, exactly. Why not just have her be like, you know what? - Sure, I haven't saw Mia because of my mom and I'd like my first grand adventure. - Yeah, she holds onto the necklace and gets a feeling when she sees the ad and makes the call. That would be perfectly acceptable. But to wrangle this is that ghost children are imitating this Irishman and his semi-American accent to get her to come over to the house. - Six foot five Irishman. - As you are up to two. - Hello, yes, this is Elodora. - My daughter's been taken. (laughing) - I hate it, I don't wanna talk about this anymore. - You just hear like, you guys hear children giggling in the back, no, no, no, hang up, hang up, hang up. - No, you, no, you hang up and now hold her again. - Elodora is your friends running. - They call her in the daytime when they shouldn't be able to do that too. - Oh my God. - I just, okay, I can't, I can't do this anymore. (laughing) - All right, that covers it. The Haunting 1999, nine out of 10, 15 stars. Joe Bob says check it out. - Okay, okay, yeah, everyone. - Definitely, Chera Blow jobs and it's like a two day. - No, Elodora, Elodora, where are you? Elodora, I'm coming, where are you? - I'm coming, Elodora. (laughing) - Okay, that is the Haunting. - Does anyone have final thoughts on this? - No, no, no, all the thoughts are out. - Oh my God, okay, well, I do, I have one more. One more just absolutely proof that this movie cannot even score a touchdown with the simplest of things. So Trace, you cut me off because I wasn't done when we were talking about the staircase sequence. Okay, so we have the staircase that falls, Liam Neeson goes up, we rescue Eleanor and they just walk to the other end of the catwalk and then they're magically safe. How the fuck did they get down and why did he have to go up there in the first place? Okay, I'm done, now we're done. (laughing) - Well, so that's when we first stopped doing the plot is during that scene, I think. - Yeah, we were driven insane and then we just became rage machines. - A house called me on my cell phone and I freaked out a little bit. - God, it's literally said Hill House. What might be Hill House, is that what they do? - Yes, exactly. (laughing) - Okay, well, before we announce we're covering next week, Patrick and Gina, let everyone over the fifth time. Where can they find you in your podcast on social media? - Oh, sure. You can find us on most places with the exception of Twitter at Kill by KillPod, we have a Patreon, we have over 340 episodes out there right now. They're all pretty fun. We talk about horror movie characters in the order in which they die and we would never would have covered the haunting 'cause only one person bites it and the whole fucking thing. - Mm-hmm, okay. Well, if you want to get in touch, I'm exhausted. (laughing) - Yeah, I think this is a... - We haven't had a rage bait, like a ragey episode like this in a while. - It's cathartic and get painful. - Just sitting in the middle of a bowling alley with a bloody pin in our hands, saying I'm dying. (laughing) Well, if you want to get in touch with us, you can read just on Twitter and Instagram at horrorqueers. Shoot us an email at horrorqueers@gmail.com. Find us on Letterbox, keep track of all the films we've covered. Chat with other listeners in our Facebook horrorqueers group. If you have a moment, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And if you want even more content, please support the show by becoming a patron at patreon.com/horroqueers. Subscribing today will get you 320 hours of Patreon content, including this month's new episodes on Hannibal season one, episode seven, a quiet place day one, Maxine, long legs, and to tie in with long legs, we've got a brand new audio commentary on David Fincher's 1995 classic, seven, definitely better than the haunting. - Truly. - And knows how to nail a downbeat ending. - Yeah. - I was gonna say, yeah, much better ending. - Joe, what are we covering next week? - Well, this is gonna be interesting, Trey. So we are closing out the month with a new to both of us title. So we're going to finally pull the trigger on someone we've mentioned a couple of times, Alejandro Yodaraski, and we're going to check out what has been billed as a variation of psycho in Santa's song gray. - Oh, boy. It described as an avant-garde, surrealistic psychological horror. I don't think I'm prepared for whatever we're in for. - No, no, but there will be more carnival stuff. So, hey, I don't think I've ever seen a Yodaraski film either, so this will be a first for me in many ways. - Okay. - A softer landing than some for Yodaraski. - Yeah, well, all right, everyone. Well, until next time, we can cross out Yandabon's The Haunting. - Indeed, cross out horror queers. ♪ The children of the night ♪ ♪ The children ♪ - It's about family. - Where are you? Where are you? - I hate it. (upbeat music) ♪ The Haunting, the Haunting, the Haunting, the Haunting, the Haunting, the Haunting ♪
Answer that insomnia study ad and beware of griffins because we are checking back into Hill House for our second Jan de Bont film in as many weeks: 1999's "don't call it a remake," The Haunting.
Joining us for an episode that immediately goes off the rails and into angry rant territory are five-time returning champions, Patrick Hamilton and Gena Radcliffe of Kill By Kill podcast.
We have *lots* of questions: where's the bisexuality? Why is the body count so low? How much should Steven Spielberg be blamed? If Crain is part of the house, then why isn't he everywhere? Oh, and who the hell called Eleanor in the first place?!
Poor Lili Taylor...and poor us!
Questions? Comments? Snark? Connect with the boys on Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Letterboxd, Facebook, or join the Facebook Group to get in touch with other listeners
> Trace: @tracedthurman
> Joe: @bstolemyremote
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Theme Music: Alexander Nakarada
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